


Captain Oblivious

by Ariel Rose (thatchaoticart)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Blood, Knives, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 09:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1505126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatchaoticart/pseuds/Ariel%20Rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He takes solace in a) the fact that it is three A.M., and b) that often things shared in the wee small hours of the morning go unmentioned later.  He hopes this is one of those things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Captain Oblivious

**Author's Note:**

> The violence isn't really all that graphic, nor is it a long scene, but I thought I'd warn for it just in case. I can't stop thinking about these two. This won't be the last.

Flipping the table at poker night had been one thing. It had been the most recent episode and it had been easy enough to get Bucky back then, Steve’s gentle yet firm, “hey,” breaking the cold, blank stare much to everyone’s surprise ( _especially_  Steve’s). Everyone else* had stilled into individual ready-for-action poses just in case things escalated further, Bruce the only one moving as he inched slowly toward Bucky just out of his peripheral vision, taking advantage of the former assassin’s eyes being locked on Steve.

(*Well, everyone else except for Tony, who’d remained lounged back in his chair, shirtless but with tie still loose around his neck, and shining, drunk eyes wide. Every week after that “just one more” tequila shot that tipped him over, he insisted they were playing  _strip_ poker, damn it, and proceeded to call everyone else a prude when he turned out to be the only participant.)

The other times had been struggles in and of themselves but he had never come for Steve when he was asleep. Night or day didn’t seem to matter but it was never in the stealth of unconsciousness.

But tonight is different. They’re not at the table with the rest of the crew, it’s not poker night, and it’s not like any of the other times. It’s his bedroom and he isn’t sure what exactly it is that wakes him but it takes him exactly 0.25 seconds to realize there’s a heavy weight on his abdomen, thighs tight around his hips, locking him in a vise grip.

More noticeable, though, is the grip of metal fingers around his throat, slick with something—no, not just something, but with his blood as he realizes that particular sting is from the razor-edge of a knife pressed into the sensitive skin just below his chin, just enough to make him leak crimson-red onto Bucky’s fingers and onto his own pillow. It’s hard enough to breathe, much less speak, but Steve manages an attempt, voice gravelly and raw from the pressure.

“Buck.”

It’s hard to see his gaze in the dark, relieved only by a wide sliver of moonlight slicing through the gap in the window curtains, but Steve can make out just enough to know it remains cold, a razor’s edge deadlier than the one at his throat. He knows touching him could make things worse, any movement mistaken for a defensive, or even worse, offensive gesture and not that of a friend desperate to drag the man beneath back to the surface.

Still, he notes that his hands and arms  _were_ left with free reign (he doesn’t dare to think it could be from some shred of Bucky’s mind doing it purposely, not in this state—but what a thought when it still manages to cross his mind). He could very easily press the concealed button on the side of the bedside table or the bed if he had to make a temporary escape. Hopefully it won’t come to that. He really,  _really_ doesn’t want to deal with the other Avengers in his apartment, not right now and not when he’s the one most qualified to handle Bucky. (Well, except for probably Bruce, but that gets into the technicalities and Steve’s never one for those.)

As Bucky leans forward, breath fanning across Steve’s face, Steve can do little more than grit his teeth as he—no, not Bucky, but rather the Winter Soldier—presses the knife harder, releasing more blood that trickles warmly down the sides of Steve’s neck into the pillow. But,  _but—_ he also loosens the grip of his metal fingers, only a little. It’s just enough to make it easier for Steve to talk.

“You had a nightmare, Bucky,” he tries again, coming through less static-y now, and hopes the lifelong nickname falling off his tongue will catch in the other man’s ears, bring him back.

Bucky’s forehead crinkles with the effort of trudging through flashes of memories and tastes of blood and of the shocking cold that knocked the breath out of him then, knocks the breath out of him again now. Steve recognizes and seizes the moment, and carefully extracts the knife from his now-loose grip, dropping it to the floor before his fingers catch Bucky’s hand again, this time slipping easily, naturally, against his palm, filling the void where the knife’s handle used to be. His other fingers circle a metallic wrist and pull slowly, as gently as he can without startling him into locking down again into soldier mode. At least, he hopes.

Bucky swears—at least Steve thinks it’s a swear, from his rudimentary knowledge of the language—in Russian, but shifts his weight to sit back and shakes his head before dropping it down, chin touching his chest. Steve waits with shallow breaths, trying to ignore the shocks running down his own left arm from the place where their hands are joined, trying to ignore the (welcome) weight of Bucky on his hips, trying to ignore the legs still tight around him, because now is absolutely  _not_ the time to be thinking about these things, not when the air is still filled with too much uncertainty in other ways (like the whole ‘not bleeding out all over your best friend and your sheets’ way, for one) and too few answers.

But then his flesh-and-blood hand leaves Steve’s and comes to rest on his shoulder, hot and almost a little insistent with pressure until he raises his eyes again to meet Steve’s gaze and drags his fingertips slowly across the surface cut he’d made along Steve’s neck. Though the wound has started to heal the blood is still slick on his skin and Steve’s breath hitches in the base of his throat at the contact; he’s ready to spring into action if this turns sour but Bucky seems to be observing it with those still-far-away eyes, not plotting to draw more—but it’s still dark and a lot can be hidden in low light.

“I did this to you.”

Steve realizes his voice is no match for the roughness belying the weariness of Bucky’s. His free hand dares to brush his side, skimming up his hip and with another hushed Russian phrase Bucky shifts again, presumably to move off of Steve but is stopped by the hand that fastens onto that hip, fingers digging into soft flesh with a pressure that leaves little room for interpretation. The intent behind it is precautionary, ensuring the brainwashed assassin part of his friend doesn’t reach down, grab the weapon and finish the job, but that intent isn’t what keeps his hand there even after Bucky stops.

_Stay_  is what every single nerve ending in Steve’s body screams, the wish hurtling through his veins, gushing out of him cloaked in blood just moments before when the knife was pressed into him. It’s probably only because it’s three A.M. and he’s been awoken by an auto-piloted assassination attempt but he doesn’t realize he said the word until Bucky repeats it back in a voice tinged with the hint of familiar warmth, the tiniest shred of that warmth breaking through the cold indifference of a killer.

“Stay?” He repeats it a second time, as if trying the word on to see if it fits in all the right places, and despite the moon disappearing behind a cloud, there’s still just enough light to see a frown twisting at Bucky’s lips but he’s looking more—more  _him_  in a way Steve can’t articulate. “When I just tried to kill you?”

“It’s never been conditional with you,” Steve blurts. “Never will be.”

He takes solace in a) the fact that it  _is_ three A.M., and b) that often things shared in the wee small hours of the morning go unmentioned later. He hopes this is one of those things.

He feels Bucky’s gaze on him and meets it as best he can, tightening the fingers of his other hand around Bucky’s metal wrist harder; this insistence prompts a different kind of shifting from the other man, a small, almost intentional roll of his hips against Steve’s and his own fingernails digging into the skin of Steve’s shoulder. It’s everything Steve can do to keep a groan from pouring out of his throat and he bites down hard on his tongue. Something in the back of his mind scares him about this whole situation—not in a  _my life is in danger_  way but something else that itches under his skin, and he sighs.

“It’s late,” he finally says, voice thick, before releasing both hands’ grips. “Do you need something to help you sleep?”

Steve isn’t sure what he means by that, except that it sounds awfully like a continuation of the invitation to stay and honestly? He’s pretty okay with that. Even though they haven’t shared sleeping quarters since the 1940s when resources and money were scarce at times and briefly as Steve led the Howling Commandos, he remembers well the feeling of Bucky’s regular, deep breathing on his skin as they slept, skin that slipped against the other’s in the sticky summer heat, slick with sweat and the faint shimmer of  _maybe_ s like mirages lingering at the edges of Steve’s mind. Wishes that leapt to the tip of his tongue when Bucky had thrown an arm over him, hitching a leg up across both of Steve’s thin ones.

It had been miserable in terms of the heat but completely the opposite of miserable in terms of Steve feeling comfortable in an intangible way, protected and safe, even if Bucky had been nothing more than deeply asleep, acting automatically and unconsciously. Which, as it turned out, was something he had come to know about quite well on and off over the last seventy years.

“You got PB and J?”

Bucky’s request instantly throws Steve back to those same leg-space-sharing days and before he can stop it a laugh tumbles out of his mouth.

“You kidding? Get your lazy ass up, soldier, and I’ll make you one.”

With a laugh that sounds like nothing short of music to Steve’s ears Bucky climbs off, thankfully making no more movements with his hips than is necessary and thereby sparing Steve’s dignity. He makes no move to retrieve his knife and when Steve swings his legs over the side he kicks it under the bed.

When he makes his way into the kitchen his eyes swivel over Bucky, seated on a stool at the island in the middle of the room, legs that had been clamped tight around Steve’s waist just moments before bare as he didn’t bother to put on anything over boxer-briefs and a ratty used-to-be-white T-shirt (one of Steve’s exercise shirts; they never lasted too long). A flush comes up to color Steve’s ears as he lets himself think, a little shamefully, of what it means for Bucky to intentionally choose to sleep in one of his old shirts.

“I can’t believe you’re the one taking care of me now,” Bucky shakes his head as Steve slathers peanut butter onto toasted bread.

“Yeah, well, times are a-changing.”

“I mostly can’t believe I missed out on seventies fashion.” Steve checks his friend’s face for any sign of shutting down at the mention of his small periods of consciousness (if one could call it that) throughout the decades but finds none, just what appears to be genuine disappointment. A smile quirks at the corner of Steve’s lips.

“It takes a certain kind of person to be able to pull off Go Go boots, Buck.”

“And you’re implying that person  _isn’t_ me?”

They laugh and for a minute Steve can breathe easily again, not choked with  _what if_ s racing through his mind, not with his eyes constantly catching Bucky’s movements in case he needs to react fast to another lapse in the fabric of his mind. For a minute it feels warm and heavy in the pit of Steve’s stomach and he opens his mouth to say something—anything—to fill the sudden silence between them, to keep Bucky from reading the thoughts on his face, but he doesn’t get the chance.

“You may wanna reconsider that whole conditional thing.” Steve almost drops the knife (dull butter-knife, just in case) he’s using to spread grape jelly onto another toasted slice of bread. So much for the no-discussion policy.

“Uh—what?” is all he can manage.  _Brilliant, yeah, way to play it cool, Rogers_. Bucky’s eyes flicker to the leftover dried trails of blood ringing Steve’s neck, smudged from his fingers earlier.

“I could have—”

“But you didn’t. And, if you forgot, it’s not like that was the first time.”  _Or the second. Or the third, or fourth…_  He slaps the piece of jelly-bread onto the peanut butter-bread and cuts a neat line, diagonally. He shoves the plate over to Bucky before starting on another sandwich, this time his own. “Besides, I like a little challenge.”

“Yeah,” Bucky mumbles around a mouthful, “no shit.”

“Too dumb not to run away from a fight, remember?” Steve grins, hopes it brings a warm kind of recognition to Bucky’s face. It does. “So stop talking while you eat before you choke.”

“Yes sir, Gramps, sir.” A mock salute and shared wry grins, and that’s that.

When they’re done and make their way back down the hallway to their bedrooms, they share a pause outside Bucky’s door.

“I meant it, you know,” it comes out in a rush, almost unbidden ( _almost_ , though he knows in the back of his mind, in that same itch under his skin, that he’s wanted to say those words for a long time), before Steve can stop himself. “You can stay—uh, I mean, with me. If that’s something you felt might, you know. Help you.”

“I’ll be fine.” His tone is firm in the way he tries to reassure Steve but something about Bucky’s gaze hints at more so Steve lingers. “But your sheets…”

Right. The blood.

“I’ve got an extra set,” he shrugs, immediately regretting not lying about it.

“It’s late,” he mirrors Steve’s words from before.

“Uh, well, yeah—but it just takes a few—”  _Great_.

Bucky laughs and holds out his hand palm down, causing a furrow in Steve’s brow.

“And  _I’m_ the one taking all the stupid with me, yeah right,” and he—in a move that makes Steve question whether he’s still dreaming—leans forward to reach his hand, grasping it in metal fingers. “That was an invitation, Captain Oblivious.”

As Bucky begins slowly walking backwards into the open room, pulling Steve in after him in a way they don’t have to break gazes, all the answers to his questions dancing in those blue eyes Steve knows better than his own, he knows this won’t be the last time he stays if Bucky lets him.  And something tells him he will.


End file.
